Archive for WTF Do I Put This?

The movie you are about to see was almost entirely written, directed, produced and animated by American artist Nina Paley and released in 2008. I’ve been a great fan of it since I first became aware of it and watched it, shortly after its release.

The ostensible purpose for this showing is as part of my course this semester, Sacred Texts in the Religions of the East. Among the themes we are considering there is virtue in Asian religion. I wanted to include something narrative from Classical Hindu tradition and it dawned on me that the movie would serve as well as anything else, and in some ways better.

The film is especially interesting for a couple of reasons, both of which entail controversy: the first is its copyright status and the other copyright issues that arose from the release of the film; and second, its use of materials from the Valmiki Ramayana tradition.

The rest of my presentation outlines these two matters (note: I’m not going to bore you with such things as a synopsis of the Indian Epic which the movie is based upon – the film itself tells you most of what you need to know – and for that matter, neither am I going to comment much upon the film’s contents).

As a fierce copyright warrior, Paley originally released the film under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license. This meant that anyone or any entity was free to view, exhibit, broadcast, or copy it – and even for charge – without any permissions from or compensation to Paley. Although, compensation is certainly encouraged and appreciated.

To that end, Paley in concert with the organization Question Copyright, developed a scheme whereby entities which share any revenue with her from showings, duplication or sale of merchandise may attach the Creator Endorsed logo to any materials associated with such enterprises.

You’ll notice that logo on the posters for tonight’s showing, and you’ll notice the can before me. Whatever you might wish to contribute I will be sure to get to Nina via her Paypal account.

Now, Paley’s stand as expressed through the creation and distribution of her film might appear to most as a mere eccentricity if not for her subsequent copyright problems.

The film uses a number of Annette Hanshaw recordings from the 1920s. While these were no longer subject to federal US copyright, through assorted State laws governing recordings, compositions, and the syncing of recordings with images which predated Federal law came into play as several entities came forward to demand royalties from Paley. Initially these entities demanded a combined US$220,000 from Paley but eventually settled for a mere US$50,000. Paley borrowed the money in order to pay up. She’s paid off the loan and made a little extra through speaking engagements and merchandizing.

Now, another condition of the settlement was that additional royalties would have to be paid in the event that 5,000 or more copies of the film were to be made and distributed. This applies to anyone who would produce +4,999 copies; the regime of the royalty payments is a byzantine arrangement involving 8 copyright holders each with their own royalty formula.

The copy were are to watch tonight is a limited edition numbered and autographed version I purchased when Paley opened her store of Sita merchandise. (I also have a graphic tee of a rishi playing the violin, but it doesn’t fit so well anymore.)

This we’d consider the major copyright issue, given the money involved and whatnot, but subsequent issues that have arisen that are perhaps more telling.

About a month ago, Paley changed the license for the film to simple public domain. This was the result of the fact that broadcasters and others simply refused to acknowledge the legally defined terms of the Creative Commons license and continued to pester Paley to sign agreements freeing them to show or use the film for whatever purposes; she`s consistently refused to enter into these agreements informing the parties in question that they had every right to do with Sita whatever they wished. The result was that they’d simply not use the film at all without such agreements.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was that our own NFB demanded that a friend of Paley`s remove all references to the film from a documentary he’s making since Paley refuses to do the paperwork to give the NFB and the documentarian permission to employ anything from Sita as they wish (all of which is given according to the Creative Commons license).

Now these issues are close to my heart as an objector to the copyright regime in North America and Europe, but they are probably not so important here. Still, with Paley, I’ll assert: copyright is broken.

Moving on, it’s probably more important here to acknowledge and discuss issues around the substance of Paley’s film.

Sita Sings the Blues has generated some controversy for its contents and its treatment of the Valmiki Ramayana.

Hindu nationalists have declared the film to be insulting to Hindu culture and derogatory to the story’s principals, especially Sita, a goddess.

Paley has also been criticised for the cultural appropriation her film represents. In an interview for the magazine Wiredshe said:

On the far left, there are some very, very privileged people in academia who have reduced all the wondrous complexities of racial relations into, “White people are racist, and non-white people are all victims of white racism.” Without actually looking at the work, they’ve decided that any white person doing a project like this is by definition racist, and it’s an example of more neocolonialism.

As you watch the movie you might find yourself sympathetic one or both of these criticisms, but – without going off on a pedantic rant – I caution you against that. For these particular materials Paley employs are fraught with respect to such issues as sacrality and scripture, and identity and colonization.

The broad lessons this volume seeks to impart are, first, it’s simply no longer tenable to consider the Valmiki Ramayana as some kind of Ur-text from which the others are merely derived or to which they are responses. Derivation and reaction has certainly occurred, but the contexts in which this has taken place are far more complex.

And so secondly, and subsequently, Many Ramayanas shows us that substance(s) and spatial and temporal location(s) of Rama-narrative materials are, on the one hand, stand each alone, and on the other hand, stand as threads in an immensely complex tapestry covering all historical time and a wide space extending well beyond South Asia.

Thus, the accusations against Paley – from the right and from the left – backfire or rather are, as the kids say, an EPIC FAIL. Sacralizing Valmiki’s Sanskrit Ramayana, as well as defending it as the culture of the Other, is to reify some particularity which is problematic on numerous levels.

Indulge these remarks on the Valmiki Ramayana which are intended to bring this to a conclusion.

First, to assert that anyone is guilty of blaspheming against the Valmiki Ramayana by questioning anything about Sita and Rama is to do violence against the Sanskrit text:

Sita, upon her marriage to Rama, no one in the West could view relatively without simply abandoning any claim to moral seriousness – she is a paragon beauty because she’s just lost all her milk teeth; alternatively, she is just a petulant tween who loses her protection in the forest because having seen the deer (a demon in disguise) she demands that Rama acquire it for her because she adores it.

Furthermore, Valmiki (and whoever else might have put their impressions on the Sanskrit text) stuffed it with moral paradoxes that the tradition wrung its hands about for centuries and could not resolve. And these are set up by the very fact that Rama, the legitimate king in succession to his father, is put aside by the keeping of a promise his father made to Rama’s stepmother. From there the (Sanskrit) story proceeds with a set of moral paradoxes which Indian tradition has never really resolved (Rama’s killing of Vali, king of the monkeys, for example).

All’s to say, Valmiki’s text seems to invite contestation, and other Ramayana traditions seem to heed to the call. To suggest that anyone is capable of, culpable in, offending against this particular narrative is to try by violence to suppress efforts which this particular text implicitly, if not explicitly, invites.

At the same time, there’s no small irony to the accusations of neocolonialism leveled against Paley. For the Valmiki text is itself a story of Othering and colonization: the historian Romila Thapar has demonstrated quite persuasively, particularly in her 1978 book, Exile and the Kingdom: Some Thoughts on the Ramayana, that the cultures of the rakshasas (demons) and the monkeys closely resemble the cultures of certain South Indian tribals (so-called scheduled castes and adivasis, fìrst dwellers) which remain today. (The representations of Ravana and his followers as demons, and Hanuman and his followers as monkeys, were troublesome for the Jains who explicitly framed their versions by mocking the idea of demons and talking monkeys and rendering those groups as merely human.)

And it’s worth noting that in the Independent period South Indian (read Tamil) nationalism has viewed Rama vs. Ravana in inverted terms – Ravana is, at the least a tragic hero, at the most, THE hero of the story as a figure resisting Sanskritic colonization of the Dravidian South.

And again, anyone who desires to, in effect, sideline the fact that Ramayana is problematic with respect to gender issues is a fool or a fascist. Paley joins a long venerable tradition of women’s perspectives – the folk songs of Telugu women for example – on the story.

Those are all the points basically I’ve wanted to make. But let me conclude with a brief point on a new discovery for me about the film. Rereading the Many Ramayanas introduction, apparently for the first time since I first saw this film, this paraphrase of the essay on South Indian shadow puppet Ramayana performances stuck out:

Unlike the Ram Lila of Banaras, performed before huge crowds, the spectators at the Kerala puppet plays are few—and those few often doze off soon after the performance begins. As a result, the puppeteers perform principally for one another. Aficionados of the genre, they strive to outdo each other in voluminous commentary and witty remarks, incorporating into the telling of the Ramayana verbal treatises on grammar, local references, and satire of pious ideals. This internal audience has thus shaped the many layers and frames of the drama, giving rise to yet another kind of diversity within the Ramayana tradition.

I ask you to bear this in mind when the shadow puppets appear in the film. And consider the following from Paley’s Wired interview about the shadow puppet scenes in the movie:

Those are friends of mine from India. That’s all unscripted, all improvised, and that’s their natural speaking voices. They’re not scholars — they were laughing, saying, “Oh, I should have read up on the Ramayana before I came,” and I was like, “No, no! I want you to go with what you remember.”

Though I can’t say for sure, I think it’s apparent that Paley was aware of the Kerala tradition and decided to take the playfulness of it and kick it up a notch as you’ll see.

With that, let’s get to the business at hand. I hope you enjoy the movie as much as I have (the 9 or 10 times I’ve seen it).

So, just got back from the Home Hardware godown (literally a godown – hardware’s all in the basement). On the walk to and fro I observed the following.

Many very busy Robins. White-Throated Sparrows flocking on my street and also very busy.

It may have been chilly earlier, but warmed up enough that I sweated up my sweatshirt real good.

Everyone and his dog (literally) was out.

And speaking of said sweatshirt (or hoodie, properly speaking), it is bright red with the logo of Les Canadiens de Montréal on the front. Honest to god, I really do sometimes forget that most ppl in this country actually care about hockey or at least carry a continuous awareness of it.

Ran into my neighbour Marcella. She asked if I was actually a Cdns fan.

Ran into a group of ladies walking their dogs (see #3). One asked if I was hoping to see them (ie. Les Canadiens) play this year. “As much as anybody, I guess,” said I, to be polite – I could give a rat’s patootie truth be told.

Kid in the convenience store next to the Home Hardware (where I stopped cause I had to buy water cause I was parched – see sweaty sweatshirt above) said, “great shirt.” He seemed a little disappointed when I told him I’d bought it cause it was cheap and cause it’s red (and hence blaze-like).

Ran into a guy in a Bruins shirt in the HH, 3 times as I walked around the isles. Three times he said in a loud voice, “booo Montréal!”

Walking out of HH I ran into him again. I said in a loud voice, “booo Boston!”

Few Minutes later, Buddy drives by me, rolls down his window, and I hear a loud dopplering “BOOOoooo!”

This was for Hinduism class. I post it now for anybuddy unfamiliar with how we got our days of the week and in the order they are. Pet peeve – stoopid mocking shit atheists say about the perceived religious nature of those same days o’ the week. It ain’t religious in the 1st instance, atheists, it’s ancient science! (Mistaken about the solar system though it is.)

[In keeping with my vow to blog more and to turn any fb status longer than what twitter allows into a post here, I offer this. BTW, I was supposed to start with my chili recipe, but Frum pissed me off again.]

I wonder if David Frum and I read the same book (but to be fair, I haven’t read DaN since I was myself a 1980s-era reader). In any case, WTF is this “perverse idealism” he thinks moves Stalinism, Jihadism or in the plot of DaN itself? I don’t think I realized til now that to be a successful shill one needs toxic doses of bougie naïveté.

How can anyone comment, and be heard, about politics today (probably in any day) if one’s epistemology does not entail the basic principle that one’s real, or imagined, enemies are such obdurate true-believers that there’s no reasoning with them? And from the intellectual to the visceral – they hate freedom, yadda yadda yadda.

Seems to me that Frum, despite the recent appearance of some sort of change of heart subsequent to his break with AEI, remains a loyal servant, though to what? you may ask. To the big picture of course, to the forces behind the decade-long Central Asian disaster, and their dreams for a future imperium.*** I don’t recall a bitter word from him, any telling of tales, subsequent to his shit-canning after his wife ran around bragging about how David coined ‘axis of evil’.

So maybe Frum is giving us a wink and a nod at the end of his little Koestler review with his evocation of Bernard Lewis: he’s not so naïve, merely playing his part for the cause, always ready to follow orders.

Again, it’s been almost 30 years since I read DaN, but I always thought that Rubashov didn’t accept his fate with equinimity because he believed, but because he knew, like most thugs and gangsters know, that such a fate is inevitable for the likes of him. FFS, we know how arrests, show-trials, and the obliteration of enemies of the state go, in the course of the novel, because Rubashov narrates, as a former offical, how it’s done.

Like Bo Xilai knows exactly what his part, and his wife Gu Kailai’s part, and Neil Heywood’s part, are in the theatre in which he stands just off centre stage.

Now, I’m not denying that there are those honest-to-god faithful to the ickiest ideologies. But if you, like David Frum, think the locus of power is to be found among them, then you, like David Frum, are not just naïve, you are balls deep in an ugly case of transference, you are a true believer, and you are probably among the first to rat out your neighbour when the cause expects it.

On the other hand, you also die by the sword. My nightmares of an American police state are not without their silver linings – they include the show trials of the likes of David Frum, David Brooks, and Ann Coulter.

***Majorly funny. Soft apologist for America, Fareed Zakharia got caught stealing in service of the cause; aggressive cheerleader, Niall Ferguson, made shit up in that same service. All in these dog-days of the summer of 2012.

Somewhere between promiscuously spreading my personal information round the internet in pursuit of free stuff etc.*** and my charitable donations, I end up receiving a lot of unexpected junk mail.

Today, walking up the step pulling out the mailbox contents which will go directly into the bluebox I found an envelope addressed to me upon which was written in bold blue letters,

With 57¢ a day you can feed an elderly Jew.

This promise, I see from reading top left, has come to me from Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews® of Canada. (I’m not the only one to think, “Jews®?” am I?)

The contents of the Rabbi’s epistle clarify (and make me go, hmmmm, again).

There are more than 300,000 poor, elderly Jews in the former Soviet Union. They endure hunger, bitter cold, and ill health because of Russia’s crippled economy. More than 60 per cent have no family at all (many lost relatives during the holocaust).

Now I’m reminded of that little liturgy of yesterday afternoon when the boss came to address the Department to confirm that the recently vacated tenure-track French biblical position cannot and will not be refilled (and that’s another story, perhaps/likely the subject for later posts). Anyway, when the question of fundraising came up, Il Dulce pronounced, you have to sell a story.

The story Rabbi Eckstein is selling me? Above the salutation in faux handwriting (complete with the quotation marks):

“I look out my balcony and see grandmas and grandpas eating from garbage bins. The fact that some strangers from overseas help – it’s unbelievable.” Brona, Achinsk, Russia

Below “Dear Friend,”

From her balcony five stories up, 80-year-old Brona can’t ignore the pitiful scenes of poverty in the streets below. You see, her view is her window to the world, because asthma has left her unable to leave her apartment for eight years now.

It goes on and on, but to the point:

Yet, despite her hard life, on one special day each week Brona’s soul lights up …. Brona is one of the lucky ones. Thanks to our supporters, an outreach worker visits her each week and brings food, medicine, heating fuel … [ellipsis in original] and friendly conversation.

On to the general appeal, back to Brona, back to the general appeal.

Ok, now – I confess – I’ve exoticized Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein and in my head he recites the passage from which this particular program gets its name complete with an accent: “Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter?” (FYI, he leaves out the rest of the verse: “when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?” And BTW – while I’m in a confessional mood – I liked Julie & Julia.)

No, the Rabbi is virtually indistinguishable from almost every administrator I’ve met in the last 20 years.

That’s not quite correct. In fact, he’s more youthful and handsome than most administrators I know. (Hmmmm, combine this remark with a pair of Meryl Streep appreciations – including a graphic Angels in America homage, for those of you who didn’t catch it – which also remind me that I also heart Babs and the Divine Miss M, and would love to see Jersey Boys, and I have to ask, am I in some sort of denial?)

Moving on.

Alright, Rabbi, I’m starting to buy the story. But who are you selling it to exactly? The answer perhaps explains why the rest of Isaiah 58.7, “not to turn away from your own flesh and blood,” was left out. Not good for the pitch I reckon: some smartass-cheapass potential donor just might note that almost 40% of the old folks have some family, as well as ask, what of that flesh and blood that is the whole of the Jewish people?

I’m not fishing for a rationale to reject his plea, rather I pose the question for the omission seems to point to the answer to the original question: the Rabbi is “proud to tell you that through the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews of Canada, thousands of kindhearted Christians reach out to people like Brona.” Sure sure, I’m a Christian by default, certainly a goy by definition.

And before anybuddy gets (any more) offended, know that I know I’m almost sold. Cynically, I’m led to investigate in search of the answer to the question, is everything with this outfit according to Hoyle? (Please note that I avoided the all too obvious euphemism for legitimate here.) Ok, BBB tells me that the “International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) meets the 20 Standards for Charity Accountability.”

Alright alright, Rabbi, between your letter, this impious post, and my oisbrenguer ways of late, I’m filled with di shuld. Take my $50.00 and hand out a food box for two. (I really wanted to give the $51 “to help provide hot, nutritious meals for an elderly Soviet Jew for three months” that the direct mailer asks of me, but the online donation form didn’t offer that option.)

***By the bye. Remember the 100 free rosaries I got through the interwebz? I’m now down to a couple of dozen. First, I cancelled out the borderline blasphemy that went with the original order and the petition for ideas for what to do with them by giving an entire box to Father Ron who, upon learning from Jacques the librarian that I had them, told Jacques who told me, that he thought such things would make nice First Communion gifts. Second, I gave away another dozen or so in something of the spirit of the educational mission of Holy Cross Family Ministries, and in my own pedagogical mission, to my World’s Living Religions class on the last day (with the disclaimer that I was neither proselytizing nor mocking) along with bunches of leftover Hallowe’en candy.

Among the boodles of new work I’m facing for next academic year is the prep for a pair of new courses:

RLST 2236 EL 01 The Spiritual Life: Institutions & Practices

This course examines the variety of religious vocations in the religions of the world in their institutional settings. Primary emphasis is placed upon life in the formal setting of the monastery and avowed ascetic practices, but consideration will also be given to other forms of quasi-ascetic religious living, like among the Amish, and priestly vocations. We will look at the social organization, economies and politics of such communities, and the relationship of religious communities to the outside world. Other themes considered include the place of gender, celibacy, poverty, education and medicine in monasticism around the world. (S) (lec 3) cr 3

and;

RLST 2237 EL 01 The Spiritual Life: Life Stories

This course examines the autobiographies, biographies and hagiographies of a variety of figures from the religions of the world. These spiritual life stories invite us to the consideration of the many facets of the religious life, such as conversation, confession, religious self-image, asceticism, veneration of saints, gender and religion, as well as the everyday life in religious communities.
(S) (sem/tut 3) cr 3

In selling the first of these courses, I’ve repeatedly advertized them to this year’s classes with the shocking promise of a week’s worth of lectures on flagellation. Of course, I’ve thought, should I REALLY do that? I’ve been mostly inclined to do it nonetheless: religious life –> asceticism –> active mortification (self- or at the hands of another). And so much good historical and popular stuff to draw from: Da Vinci Code and Opus Dei and dreamy albino self-flagellating Paul Bettany, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the real Medieval Flagellants and all that other fabulous stuff from one of my favourite book-possesions, a very old edition of Flagellation & the Flagellants: A History of the Rod in All Countries from the Earliest Period to the Present Time by Rev. Wm. M. Cooper, B.A.

If I’ve been wavering about lecturing on BDSM for God, I’m tipping more in favour of it now. For catching up on posts over at Dangerous Minds, I hit upon a post about Christian Domestic Discipline. Who knew!

And doing a little extra research (ie. Googling it) I hit upon this marvelous resource for all you devout couples out there which are burdened with an impiously unruly wife, CDD (which, I see, is linked in the DM post):

This website is intended to be a haven for married couples who practise safe and consensual Christian Domestic Discipline (CDD), or for those who would like to learn more about CDD. It is intended to provide support and encouragement for those who believe in traditional Christian marriage, with the husband as the head of the household, and the wife as his helpmeet.

This website is intended to provide a refuge for those interested in a Christian Domestic Discipline marriage. Here they might find information and share fellowship with other CDD couples without having to wade through pornography, warped practises, or distorted ideals of what we believe God created for marriage. This site is not the typical “spanking” site prevalent on the web. This site focuses mainly upon improving marital relationships by sharing the guidelines and marital roles listed in God’s Word.

I think the Dangerous Minds folk are correct:

The justification in their minds seems to be of a theological nature, an ass-slapping triad of master. slave and heavenly father! Take out the Christian references to a supernatural power and what is being described here is no different from a bog standard BDSM website.

However, it’s a bit prudish and fallacious on their part to go on to argue that:

If it’s not a zany form of Christian BDSM, then the alternate explanation of CDD must be that it’s a justification for domestic abuse invoking a higher authority. That’s where it transitions from kooky to sinister. One website tells husbands when it’s appropriate to spank their wives in front of the children! The “you’d better keep yourself up, or else” and the “look what you made me do” bullying aspect of this is simply appalling.

Though many still argue that extreme or even middle of the road BDSM is pathological or veiled abuse, I seriously doubt DM’d be prepared to argue that or connect it to wife-beating.

And without real proof of a connection between CDD, Christianity and/or spousal abuse, I see nothing sinister here at all (or zany for that matter). Rather, I don’t see anything more in CDD in the main than the self-same banality of Gorean, Medieval or Clown kink, and pretty much every other kind of durdy role-playing.

Spank me, Daddy! Spank me … for Big Daddy!

***

BTW, while it remains in bureaucratic limbo, this course is not dead and I intend to revive its approval process this year too, among all that admin-type work I’ve got to do:

RLST 22** EL: Religion and Sexuality

This course examines traditional religious attitudes and responses to human sexuality, from ways in which it is controlled or proscribed, to ways in which it is celebrated or embraced. Major themes considered include: monasticism/chastity; religion and the body; fertility rites; the religious aspects of marriage; religious attitudes toward homosexuality; tantra; sexuality in New Religious Movements; and, sexual imagery in religious literature. (S) (lec 3) 3 credits

Surely this will be a fine place to reuse my flagellation/CDD lectures. (The sales pitch will include the gag, “sorry, there is no practicum for this class.)

Also, this course will give me the motivation I need to finally read through all those University of Chicago Press books I got on sodomy (for 5 bux each) to which I’ve referred in mixed company just for fun – my boss’s discomfort and lame attempt at deflective humour was a big smile.

***

Now having finished this, I’m continuing with my work-avoidance by finishing up Story of the Eyeby Georges Bataille. 😉